And what about features that are for US only ?
One big strength of Apple was the ability to deliver the same product or software everywhere in the world at the same time.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Announced Swift Assist at WWDC 2024... So Where Is It?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
One big strength of Apple was the ability to deliver the same product or software everywhere in the world at the same time.
Yes, but we can't compare a missing "side" feature or product with missing completely the core target they have spent hours to announce at WWDC24.
It's like announcing a new car before discovering you won't be able to make the engine work.
I agree. I hope Apple goes back to in-person events. I miss the days of the live demos and things not always working right, or the presenters going off-script. I feel like Apple has gotten fixated on needing to appear perfect, which they can easily accomplish through pre-recorded content. They need to be more humble.
I can't help but wonder if some of the stuff they showed off last year was even a working demo, or if they just did movie magic and hoped they finished development in time. I guess even if they did switch to in-person events and live demos, would they even show the real thing or just a mock application/simulation that works flawlessly?
I think the ultimate example of how disconnected from reality they are is when they gave themselves the car demo and had a person pretend to be Siri because Siri would not be capable of answering basic questions like that.
And even then they didn’t ask themselves if that’s not the bigger problem for them.
I agree to a point with some commenters over Apple’s distraction with AR or as I would point out as well their failed foray into smart cars and driverless ones as that, as being a hindering of them getting into AI.
At WWDC 2024, Apple announced Swift Assist, an AI-powered coding companion integrated into Xcode 16 that's designed to assist developers by generating code from natural language prompts. At the time, Apple said Swift Assist would be coming "later this year."
We're now three months into 2025, and it's nowhere to be seen.
Swift Assist (Image: Apple)
Unlike Apple Intelligence, Swift Assist never appeared in beta. Apple hasn't announced that it's been delayed or cancelled. The company has since released Xcode 16.3 beta 2, and as Michael Tsai points out, it's not even mentioned in the release notes.
Swift Assist is different from the new predictive code completion engine in Xcode 16 that can suggest the code developers need and runs locally on a developer's device. Here's how Apple described Swift Assist in its Platforms State of the Union:
Unfortunately, any initial excitement has long been replaced by frustration. Check out some of the comments from the developer community:
Jbmaxwell:
Asteng88:
Rennarda:
It's a bad look for Apple, especially given the current controversy surrounding the company's delayed personalized Siri features. WWDC 2025 is less than three months away, and it seems that developers are beginning to wonder whether they'll ever see Swift Assist in Xcode 16 at all. We've reached out to Apple for comment.
Article Link: Apple Announced Swift Assist at WWDC 2024... So Where Is It?
But that misses the larger point. AR and VR has been a pipe dream since the 80’s. Remember the hype in the 90s around VR being pushed by people like Jaron Lanier and Silicon Graphics? Remember “Second Life” ? Self driving cars and “robo-taxis” have been a staple of science fiction since the 50’s. So has AI.
And now we have reached a technological level where we can experiment with developing and deploying said futuristic dreams. Only to now find out that’s it’s hard, and extraordinarily expensive and the results are very sub par. Not enough to turn each of these things into multi-billion dollar, multi-decades long profitable enterprises.
Ever since Steve Job’s death Apple has been a trend chaser, not an innovating “synthesizer”. What do I mean? Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak never created anything that didn’t already exist. Their genius was in taking existing technology and make it useful and even magical for the common person. But ever since the iPad….what’s left? I mean…the iPad is simply the ultimate synthesis of the stone tablet upon which cuniform writing was developed and technology. The laptop is the synthesis of the typewriter and the desktop general use computer. The iPhone is the synthesis of the PDA and a telephone.
These are all general use objects and their antecedents stretch back thousands of years in the case of the tablet.
But…a pair of VR goggles? A self driving car? Gen AI ? Where is the antecedent…particularly ancient antecedents? Yes we have had analog glasses for hundreds of years, TVs for nearly a hundred years and automobiles for over 100 years. But where is the mass clamor for sticking your TV on your face? Who wants a digital phantom to drive your car ? Who wants a digital phantom to choose your healthcare or who gets assistance or any other kind of life or death decision ? I mean….en masse? In the way a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak could see how to synthesize it into a useful, safe and even magical tool for the masses.
VR is still a trend and a niche and will be forever. Auto driving cars will be a trend and niche and will be until the tech gets orders of magnitude better AND Insurance Companies sign off on it. In fact, until Insurance companies underwrite fully self driving cars you can forget about their mass rollout even if the tech gets orders of magnitude better. And Gen AI ? Well that bubble is either already bursting or at best plateauing. Microsoft is backing away from huge leases on power generation…like gigawatts worth of power which means they are backing off AI data center rollouts. OpenAI and Sam Altman is backing away from claims of AGI, their latest LLM model hallucinates 37% of the time ( their own words ) and they claim they have run out of GPUs to train even larger models…the kind that could lead to what they used to call “AGI”….which Sam Altman is already hedging over what that actually means or looks like in the real world.
And that brings us to the dilemma facing Apple. Steve Jobs is dead. Steve Wozniak is retired. Jony Ive is out. And Tim Cook is just iterating existing tech brought forth by Steve Jobs and chasing trends that have already proven to be nothing more than a very small niche
( VR/AR ) or failures like self driving cars and AI. Apple is floundering and has lost focus. But I’m not sure if it wasn’t just inevitable. We’ve reached peak tech for the vast majority of tech using folk. I think we’ve reached the point in tech evolution like our ancestors who after domesticating horses and developing the wheel and the cart found that it pretty much satisfied their transportation needs for 6000 + years.
They're awaiting final approval on a collab to call it "Taylor Swift Assist."
Yeah they're pretty bad, it's very noticeable with Swift. Claude has done much better for me compared to ChatGPT.
They're way behind. AI is moving so fast. I'm using Cursor (basically Swift Assist for any programming language) for my apps and it's a game changer. I've accomplished months of coding in a matter of hours. Hours of coding in a matter of minutes. The AI can also fix bugs and optimize code. There's features I had to hangup because I had difficulty figuring out how to implement them and Cursor immediately gave me a solution in seconds.
ChatGPT just added XCode integration as well.
Apple needs to catch up. They've been in a good position recently with how they've made their code universal across all devices. We're getting to the point where anyone can be an app developer. If you want an app that has some sort of subscription in the App Store, one day you'll just prompt the AI to make it for free.
ChatGPT just added XCode integration as well.
Apple needs to catch up. They've been in a good position recently with how they've made their code universal across all devices. We're getting to the point where anyone can be an app developer. If you want an app that has some sort of subscription in the App Store, one day you'll just prompt the AI to make it for free.
Apple is totally losing out in China and I expect the iPhone as a milking is coming to an end soon. Let’s face it… the iPhone doesn’t excel in any category anymore. The only difference with their competitors are its steep prices and less capable software.
They have to make up for investors. So, hey, let’s do ads.
That's what happens when you show off canned demos, instead of working code.
That’s the very nature of innovation - you’re trying new things and some of those will work while others won’t.
There’s no such thing as innovation without failure.
You are right, Claude is the best for swift I have used.
This is now why Apple is doing a UI revamp of their OS. They know how to do those. And, it's a shiny object to distract you from the full on AI debacle.
I'm guessing you're not doing iOS app development with SwiftUI previewing. You need Xcode for that.
I wonder Apple's having delays on so many things. I wonder if it has to do with maybe too many people are working from home and not collaborating in their office space and things aren't getting done properly. I don't know.
At WWDC 2024, Apple announced Swift Assist, an AI-powered coding companion integrated into Xcode 16 that's designed to assist developers by generating code from natural language prompts. At the time, Apple said Swift Assist would be coming "later this year."
We're now three months into 2025, and it's nowhere to be seen.
Swift Assist (Image: Apple)
Unlike Apple Intelligence, Swift Assist never appeared in beta. Apple hasn't announced that it's been delayed or cancelled. The company has since released Xcode 16.3 beta 2, and as Michael Tsai points out, it's not even mentioned in the release notes.
Swift Assist is different from the new predictive code completion engine in Xcode 16 that can suggest the code developers need and runs locally on a developer's device. Here's how Apple described Swift Assist in its Platforms State of the Union:
Unfortunately, any initial excitement has long been replaced by frustration. Check out some of the comments from the developer community:
Jbmaxwell:
Asteng88:
Rennarda:
It's a bad look for Apple, especially given the current controversy surrounding the company's delayed personalized Siri features. WWDC 2025 is less than three months away, and it seems that developers are beginning to wonder whether they'll ever see Swift Assist in Xcode 16 at all. We've reached out to Apple for comment.
Article Link: Apple Announced Swift Assist at WWDC 2024... So Where Is It?
I’ve done a couple of YouTube tutorial follow along, it’s impressive too in its own way
Actual humility from a billion dollar corporation that only cares about bottom line ?
Oh my sweet summer child
Xcode does not spellcheck commit messages, can't find readme file for local package imports, Xcode routinely gets confused when doing project reorganizations such that Xcode and all of its caches have to be cleaned manually to get it back working, Xcode does not report package errors at all, etc.
I think there is probably a years worth of work to do before AI is even remotely needed.
I think there is probably a years worth of work to do before AI is even remotely needed.